Sangkum

Sangkum was a royalist-Buddhist socialist political party in Cambodia that was active from 1955 to 1970. The party was founded by Norodom Sihanouk as a pro-Sihanouk party, and it combined pseudo-socialist slogans with social conservative values, monarchism, nationalism, and Theravada Buddhist teachings. The Sangkum was designed to democratize the country and to exert political control, and it sought progressive goals and the end of social injustice while also supporting the conservative religious and social traditions of the country. The 1966 elections resulted in an overwhelming victory for the rightist candidates, leading to Norodom forming a left-wing "counter government". The moderate pro-Sihanouk faction, which also supported North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, was violently repressed by Lon Nol's military, and the Sangkum regime adopted brutal tactics against foreign leftists, as well as the Khmer left. This led to the Cambodian Civil War, and Sihanouk was deposed by Lon Nol and the rightists in 1970. Elements of the Sangkum regime went on to form the royalist party FUNCINPEC, while Lon Nol's Social Republican Party founded the new Khmer Republic.